Thursday, December 13, 2018

Ah, Flint. Good to know that — despite all the changes — it's still a place where Ruebens, shoulder clod, and brisket are considered light luncheon fare.Roberto Acosta at MLive reports on the ownership change and menu updates at Blackstone's on Saginaw Street in downtown.

The restaurant will soon feature two menus -- daytime and nighttime -- each offering different items such as a classic Neapolitan-style pizza cooked in 170 seconds on a wood-fired oven.

"It's light. It's not the heavier variety like some of the other places," said Hester. "It's something that you can come down at lunch and you're not going to overeat."

The daytime menu will include sandwiches including the Big Sicilian from the Starlite menu, Reubens, hamburgers with a combination of shoulder clod and brisket meats ground in-house, and salads.

I was assigned to the Cab Shop, an area more commonly known to its inhabitants as the Jungle. Lifers had told me that on a scale from one to ten — with one representing midtown Pompeii and ten being then GM Chairman Roger Smith's summer home — the Jungle rates about a minus six.

"It wasn't difficult to see how they had come up with the name for the place. Ropes, wires and assorted black rubber cables drooped down and entangled everything. Sparks shot out in all direction — bouncing in the aisles, flying into the rafters and even ricocheting off the natives' heads. The noise level was deafening. It was like some hideous unrelenting tape loop of trains having sex. I realized instantly that, as far as new homes go, the Jungle left a lot to be desired. Me Tarzan, you screwed.

I was headed to a vacant house owned by a friend of mine named Rich. Like me, he had grown up in Flint and eventually moved to San Francisco, where we met. He owned three “investment” properties in Flint, although the fact that all of them were empty indicated they weren’t exactly generating a lot of income. He had happily agreed to let me crash at one of them. “It’s good to have it look like there’s someone actually living there,” he had told me. “It keeps the thieves from steal­ing the plumbing.”

It took me a while to find the house because downtown still had an inexplicable number of confusing one-way streets, an unnecessary rem­nant of the days when growth and good fortune meant traffic congestion. I’d also never spent much time in the Carriage Town neighborhood. It was unfamiliar terrain when I lived in Flint, a neighborhood to avoid unless you were in the market for drugs, hookers, or an ass kicking.

Rich’s sister, Berniece, was there to greet me when I finally arrived. She still lived in Flint. Although we’d never met, she showed me around the house like I was an old friend, presenting a very practical house­warming gift—a four-pack of toilet paper. She seemed worried about me, offering advice like “Don’t let anybody you don’t know into the house” and “Be careful who you talk to on the street.” I tried to reas­sure her that I knew how to take care of myself. I was from Flint, after all. But I sensed that my San Francisco pedigree, the new Patagonia shirt with lots of snaps and pockets that I’d bought for the trip, and my teal-striped Pumas were undermining my street cred.

Before I try to pawn myself off as a minor-league George Orwell writing a Rust Belt version of Down and Out in Paris and London, I should point out that Rich’s house wasn’t as rundown as many in the neighborhood. It was the well-preserved former home of Charles W. Nash, the president of GM in 1912 and founder of Nash Motors. It was just across the street from the Durant-Dort Office Building, the beautifully restored birthplace of GM. Unlike many of Flint’s empty structures, the Nash House had luxuries like plumbing and electricity. The water heater was broken, but a cold shower would be better than nothing. Inexplicably, the place was painted pink, destroying any chance I had of establishing myself as some kind of tough-guy writer, a Buick City Bukowski.

The wood floors, wraparound porch, handsome stained glass win­dow, and high ceilings oozed Victorian charm. There was no sign of habitation other than an awkwardly modern glass table in the dining room, a couple of folding chairs, and an expensive-looking Persian rug in the living room. Our voices echoed in the empty space. The bulk of the tour was devoted to the house’s four doors and eight locks. The kitchen door had been nailed shut from the inside with a two-by-four after a break-in. The side door was locked and seldom used. If there was a fire, Berniece advised, the front door was my best option, other than the windows.

“I’ll try not to burn the place down,” I joked.

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” she answered. Like any city with a lot of abandoned property, Flint houses regularly went up in flames.

I decided to bed down on the nice rug. Besides adding a little padding, it was close to the fire exit.

But on November 4, Americans are taken hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Iran. I fold my papers and stare at pictures of blindfolded Americans. I don't connect the dots. Then, two weeks later, in the middle of a November night, Dad calls from the officers' club in Subic Bay. Mom says he wants to talk to me. I rub the sleep out of my eyes and cradle the phone. He says he's sorry. The boat is being turned around, off to the Persian Gulf, as a show of strength. I don't know what that means. I just know there will be no trip to Hawaii.

Dad's letters continue to arrive from somewhere in fits and spurts. They used to be marked on the back with the number of days until his return. Now he just circles the seal on the envelope with a question mark and an unhappy face.

Soon, it's the morning of November 28. Mom sleeps in; Chrissie has been up with the croup. By 11 am, I'm trying, unsuccessfully, to skate backward at the Roller Barn for eighth-grade gym class. I can tell you the electoral-college breakdown of the Carter-Ford presidential election and the status of Kenny Stabler's wobbly knees, but when it comes to the things that confer acceptance upon boys – hitting a baseball, building a catapult for Webelos, roller-skating backward – I'm hopeless. I need someone to show me how, someone to tell me that it really doesn't matter anyway. But that man is always 8,000 miles away.

So I fall on my ass. The cool kids snicker. My gym teacher calls me over. I'm relieved at first because it stops the laughing. But the teacher's permanently upbeat face has gone flat. She points to a man standing by the snack bar. He wears a black uniform and carries a white hat in his hand. It is Lieutenant Commander Laddie Coburn, Dad's best friend. I slowly skate over and sit down on a bench. He hesitates, sits down next to me, and puts a hand on my knee.

Back in 1945, when Americans celebrated the conclusion of World War II and looked forward to a future of peace and prosperity, Buick historian Carl Crow claimed that the United States consisted of a thousand Flints. Even though many decades have since past, Crow’s words still ring true. From coast to coast, the America of the twenty-first century is, in fact, a thousand Flints, but not at all in the whiggish capacity that Crow envisioned. There are Flints in the economically depressed neighborhoods of Decatur, Illinois; Camden, New Jersey; Erie, Pennsylvania, and other struggling cities once renowned for their industrial might. Flints also exist in hypersegregated ghettos on Chicago’s south and west sides, in Miami’s Overtown district, and in struggling suburbs such as Yonkers, New York; East Palo Alto, California; and Ferguson, Missouri, where the legacies of white supremacy and legal, popular, and administrative Jim Crow continue to abridge civil rights and economic opportunity. However, there are also a thousand Flints in the booming, affluent bastions of suburban capitalism surrounding high-tech metropolises such as San Francisco, Boston, Raleigh, Seattle, and Austin—places like Cupertino, California; Redmond, Washington; and Round Rock, Texas, all of them defined more by fragmentation and exclusion than by cooperation and inclusion. There are Flints on the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts as well as in the so-called Rust Belt and Sunbelt, for the conditions of racial, spatial, and economic inequality that took shape in the Vehicle City during the twentieth century know no regional boundaries. Indeed, Flints can be found anywhere in the world where the eternal quest for metropolitan growth and revitalization has buttressed social inequalities. Because it took the full weight of government at all levels along with the efforts of untold numbers of ordinary Americans to construct and fortify the walls that still surround the nation’s Flints, it will require an equally concerted movement of millions to demolish them all and build anew.

In the first full account of this American tragedy, Anna Clark's The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision making. Places like Flint are set up to fail—and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences can be fatal.

Through a series of disastrous decisions, the state government had switched the city’s water supply to a source that corroded Flint’s aging lead pipes. Complaints about the foul-smelling water were dismissed: the residents of Flint, mostly poor and African American, were not seen as credible, even in matters of their own lives.

It took eighteen months of activism by city residents and a band of dogged outsiders to force the state to admit that the water was poisonous. By that time, twelve people had died and Flint’s children had suffered irreparable harm. The long battle for accountability and a humane response to this man-made disaster has only just begun.

"General Motors will cut up to 14,000 workers in North America and put five plants up for possible closure as it abandons many of its car models and restructures to focus more on autonomous and electric vehicles, the automaker announced Monday.

"The reductions could amount to as much as 8 percent of GM's global workforce of 180,000 employees.""The restructuring reflects changing North American auto markets as manufacturers continue to shift away from cars toward SUVs and trucks. In October, almost 65 percent of new vehicles sold in the U.S. were trucks or SUVs. That figure was about 50 percent cars just five years ago.

"GM is shedding cars largely because it doesn't make money on them, Citi analyst Itay Michaeli wrote in a note to investors."

And...

"Trump, who has made bringing back auto jobs a big part of his appeal to Ohio and other Great Lakes states that are crucial to his re-election, also said he was being tough on General Motors CEO Mary Barra.

"At a rally near GM's Lordstown, Ohio, plant last summer, Trump told people not to sell their homes because the jobs are 'all coming back.'"

Monday, December 3, 2018

"In the 1920s, 'slumming' became a mania, as urban elites sought out the exotic, the 'real,' wherever they could find it. They packed into the speakeasies that filled the cities after the imposition of Prohibition, where they could rub shoulders with Italian, Irish, or Jewish gangsters. They filled theaters to see ethnic entertainers such as Ragtime Jimmy Durante, late of Coney Island, or the anarchic Marx Brothers. And in the most startling turn of all, they discovered Negroes living in their midst.

"In the early 1920s, sophisticates scrambled to grab a share of the black life that the southern migration was bringing into cities. White producers mounted all-black musicals. White couples fumbled with the Charleston. And white patrons poured into Chicago's South Side jazz joints and Harlem nightclubs. If they were lucky, they squeezed into the Vendome, where Louis Armstrong held the floor, or Edmond's Cellar, where Ethel Waters sang the blues. The frenzy was shot through with condescension. White slummers thought black life exciting because it was "primitive" and vital. Visiting the ghetto's haunts became the era's way to snub mainstream society, to be in the avant-garde. 'Jazz, the blues, negro spirituals, all stimulate me enormously,' novelist Carl Van Vechten wrote H.L. Mencken in the summer of 1924. 'Doubtless, I shall discard them too in time.'"

Thursday, October 25, 2018

The comment section of Flint Expatriates is truly a mixed
bag. For all the meaningful connections I've made with Flintoids over the
years, I've also had to deal with racists, weirdos, and sickos who think
Detroit actually knows how make a real Coney.

Then there are the spambots clogging the comment section and
forcing me to spend hours of my life deleting them. But I eventually discovered
that many were quite beautiful, if not poetic, with their tortured syntax,
goofed up conjugation, and lines that would feel at home in a Patti Smith cover of Nirvana.

Here's the latest batch, with my comments below each ode.

Pretty element of
content.

I just stumbled upon
your weblog and in accession capital to assert

that I get actually
enjoyed account

your weblog posts.

Anyway,

I will be subscribing
to your feeds

or even I achievement
you get admission to consistently rapidly.

— Teddy Bear

Thank you, Teddy Bear. I am having bumper stickers made as
we speak declaring "Pretty Element of Content!" I hope they will
bring solace to other drivers in these troubled times.

This is my very first
time i go to here.

I discovered a great
number of entertaining stuff in your blog site, particularly its discussion.
From your tons of feedback in your articles,

I guess I am not the
only one possessing each of the satisfaction here!

Preserve up the great
operate.

— drukarka 3d

Actually, drukarka 3d, judging from the sales of my book,
you may indeed be "the only one possessing each of the satisfaction here!"

I haven’t any word to
appreciate this post.

Really i am impressed
from this post

the person who create
this post it was a great human.

— Anonymous

Thanks for the kind words. I'd like to think, in my moments
of unbridled hubris, that I am a great human. But your use of the past tense
does cause me some concern.

Nice blog and
absolutely outstanding.

You can do something
much better but i still say this perfect.

Keep trying for the
best.

— Indianapolis Junk Yard

Junk yard, why do you torment me? You say it's perfect, but
then tell me I can do much better. This kind of Zen crap may work in Indy, but
not in Flint.

Thursday, October 11, 2018

"I find these days that a wistful form of time travel has become a persistent political theme, both on the right and on the left. On November 10 The New York Times reported that nearly seven in ten Republicans prefer America as it was in the 1950s, a nostalgia of course entirely unavailable to a person like me, for in that period I could not vote, marry my husband, have my children, work in the university I work in, or live in my neighborhood. Time travel is a discretionary art: a pleasure trip for some and a horror story for others. Meanwhile some on the left have time travel fancies of their own, imagining that the same rigid ideological principles once applied to the matters of workers’ rights, welfare, and trade can be applied unchanged to a globalized world of fluid capital."— Zadie Smith, New York Review of Books, 2016

Thursday, July 26, 2018

The more things change, the more they stay the same, at least when it comes to politics.My old Flint precinct in Civic Park is decidedly blue, just like my current precinct in San Francisco's Bernal Heights, according to this great New York Times "extremely detailed map of the 2016 election."

"One can read Teardown and go 'My, my, my! What a horrid town! Thank God I don't live there!' Oh, but you do. Just as the 'Roger & Me
Flint' of the 1980s was the precursor to a wave of downsizing that
eventually hit every American community, Gordon Young's Flint of 2013,
as so profoundly depicted in this book, is your latest warning of what's
in store for you — all of you, no matter where you live — in the next
decade. The only difference between your town and Flint is that the Grim
Reaper just likes to visit us first. It's all here in Teardown, a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once great American city."— Michael Moore

"There must be a thousand good reasons to flee Flint. I
can't assume there are many reasons to return. Gordon Young's Teardown supplies a few of these
answers. A humorous, heartfelt and often haunting tale of a town not many could
love. Fortunately for us, a few still do."

— Ben Hamper, author of Rivethead: Tales
From the Assembly Line

“Teardown is the tragic and somehow
hilarious tale of one man's attempt to return to his hometown of Flint,
Michigan. Gordon Young is a Flintoid at heart, and his candid observations
about both the shrinking city and his own economic woes read heartbreakingly
true.”

— Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City:
The Education of an Urban Farmer

“Armed with an aluminum baseball bat
and a truth-seeking pen, Gordon Young returns to the post-industrial wasteland
of his hometown — Vehicle City, aka Flint, Michigan — in search of a derelict
house to buy and restore. At least that's his cover story. Young's true mission
is to reclaim his past in order to make sense of his present. If you're
bewitched by the place where you grew up, you'll find comfort and a sense of
home in the pages of Teardown.

— Jack Shafer, Reuters columnist and a former Michigander

“Like so many other Flintites, I visit my hometown with a mix
ofsadness, repugnance, and anger. Flint is too easy to
criticize, but Ilook back in gratitude
for the values Flint instilled and the bonds Imade that remain with me to this day. You can take the boy out ofFlint, but you can’t take Flint out of the boy.”

— Howard Bragman, author of Where’s My Fifteen Minutes?

“Teardown is a funny and ultimately
heartbreaking memoir. The travails of house hunting are skillfully interwoven
with Gordon Young’s attempt to reconcile life in his adopted city of San
Francisco with his allegiance to Flint, Michigan, the troubled city of his
childhood. The result is an all too contemporary American story of loyalty,
loss, and finding your way home.”

— Tom Pohrt, artist and author of Careless
Rambles by John Clare, Having a Wonderful
Time, and Coyote Goes Walking.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

In the GOP-controlled states of Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio, waiver proposals would subject hundreds of thousands of Medicaid enrollees to work requirements, threatening to cut off their health insurance if they can’t meet an hours-per-week threshold.

Those waivers include exemptions for the counties with the highest unemployment, which tend to be majority-white, GOP-leaning, and rural. But many low-income people of color who live in high-unemployment urban centers would not qualify, because the wealthier suburbs surrounding those cities pull the overall county unemployment rate below the threshold.

In Michigan, the GOP-controlled legislature is trying to pass a bill to make the 700,000 people enrolled in the state’s Medicaid expansion either work at least 29 hours per week or lose their benefits for a year. According to the state’s own numbers, 105,000 people could lose their insurance, but that burden will not be shared equally across the state.

A Washington Post analysis found that while African Americans make up about 23 percent of Medicaid enrollees in Michigan, they would make up just 1.2 percent of the people eligible for an exemption. Meanwhile, 57 percent of Michigan Medicaid enrollees are white, but white residents would make up 85 percent of the population eligible for an exemption.

El Rancho postcard from a book of Genesee County postcards via Gerry Godin. A reader is hoping someone can help her remember the name of &...

"Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City" by Gordon Young

An intimate, indepth exploration of the past, present, and future of Flint, Michigan. Essential reading for anyone trying to understand why bad things — like the Flint Water Crisis — keep happening to Flint.

Support Flint Expatriates

If you'd like to help offset the operating costs of Flint Expatriates, feel free to donate any amount, however small. (We're talking $1-$5 here.) The goal is extremely modest — more profits than AutoWorld!

If Paypal isn't an option for you, simply email me at the Flint Expatriates World Headquarters, also known as my living room, and I'll provide a mailing address: gyoung(at)flintexpats(dot)com.

DMCA Notice

Flintexpats.com respects the intellectual property of others.

If you believe that your copyrighted work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement and is accessible on this site, you may notify our copyright agent, as set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA). For your complaint to be valid under the DMCA, you must provide the following information when providing notice of the claimed copyright infringement:

* A physical or electronic signature of a person authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner Identification of the copyrighted work claimed to have been infringed

* Identification of the material that is claimed to be infringing or to be the subject of the infringing activity and that is to be removed

* Information reasonably sufficient to permit the service provider to contact the complaining party, such as an address, telephone number, and, if available, an electronic mail address

* A statement that the complaining party "in good faith believes that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or law"

* A statement that the "information in the notification is accurate", and "under penalty of perjury, the complaining party is authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed"

The above information must be submitted as a written, faxed or emailed notification to the following Designated Agent: Attn: DMCA Office, Flintexpats.com, 418 Anderson St., San Francisco, CA 94110, gyoung@flintexpats.com.

WE CAUTION YOU THAT UNDER FEDERAL LAW, IF YOU KNOWINGLY MISREPRESENT THAT ONLINE MATERIAL IS INFRINGING, YOU MAY BE SUBJECT TO HEAVY CIVIL PENALTIES. THESE INCLUDE MONETARY DAMAGES, COURT COSTS, AND ATTORNEYS’ FEES INCURRED BY US, BY ANY COPYRIGHT OWNER, OR BY ANY COPYRIGHT OWNER’S LICENSEE THAT IS INJURED AS A RESULT OF OUR RELYING UPON YOUR MISREPRESENTATION. YOU MAY ALSO BE SUBJECT TO CRIMINAL PROSECUTION FOR PERJURY.

This information should not be construed as legal advice, for further details on the information required for valid DMCA notifications, see 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3).

Google Analytics

Google Analytics

"I grew up on the Eastside and recall the unexplained pride I felt when the 3:30 Buick factory whistle blew and the roughly dressed workers poured out of the General Motors labyrinth swinging their lunch pails. Some were headed for home and some for the corner bar, but all with the determined step of an army after a battle won. I somehow felt as if I were a part of this giant assembly line and the city it fed."